Tuesday, May 03, 2005
BHL: A thing which impressed me there, at the beginning, was the flood of American flags. Everywhere American flags. On the windows, on the shops, on the jackets, on the bicycles, on the cars. I am coming from a country where you never see a flag. I come from a country where to love the flag, or to feel an emotion in front of the flag, is considered as proof that you are a cuckoo and an idiot. And I arrived in a country where there are flags everywhere. My hypothesis is that it has something to do with the fragility of being a nation in this huge space of fifty states. People come from everywhere. The greatness of America is that being a nation has nothing to do with the evidence of the body. It has nothing to do even with the fact of having common roots in common ground. It has to do with an idea. It has to do with contracts. It is to want to be an American. We are not born American, we become American, and this creates a sort of uncertainness, a sort of fragility. Compensation for that is this extreme exhibition of the flag.
Another difference. I come from a country where religion, the faith, the creed in God, is a declining attitude. Old churches are in a deep crisis. But I landed in a country last year where you cannot find one American —lady or gentleman—saying that he doesn't believe in God. Tocqueville had seen that already. This is a big part of his observation. He stressed the paradox of this being the only nation in the world where freedom and faith did not go in two separate roads. In France, liberty has had to be gained over religion. The less religion we have in France, the more liberty we have. In America, Tocqueville said, it is contrary—the two nourish and feed each other.
Sometimes one feels that in America banks look like churches; "In God We Trust." But you also have the feeling that some churches look like banks. At the Willow Creek mega-church, for example, you feel as if you have walked into a big bank. And a new fact for me in this theatre of the religions is the proximity, the banality, the prosaicism of God.
David Brooks: A Harvard historian, Sacvan Bercovitch, said to me one of the smartest things that has been said about the Unites States, which is that a crucial distinction was not recognized here between the sacred and the profane. He said that when people came here in the seventeenth century, they noticed two things. First they noticed the incredible abundance that was in front of them. And then they came to realize that God's plan could be realized here on this continent. So religious fulfillment, and getting rich while doing it, went together. I think that's why churches begin to look like banks and we have companies like Ben and Jerry's ice cream which look like churches.
BHL: So, of what am I afraid? Of what should you be afraid? I would not dare to say. You know yourself. But myself there are a few things which I love and a few which frighten me. For instance, coming back to the topic of religion. One day I was in a helicopter going above the Grand Canyon. The pilot was a young boy, quite up-to-date, modern, liking new music, dating with a beautiful girl, and—I'm completely sure—secular in his mind. A modern, young, American boy. And I asked him "What about this huge, magnificent landscape that we see under our feet?" The canyon. And he said to me, "There are two theories." I felt aie, aie, aie, as we say in French, Problems begin! "First theory," he said, "during millions of years, the erosion of the water," and so on and so on. "Second theory," he said, "six thousand years ago there was a big flood which took place exactly here. And this is the place of the creation of the world." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Yes, there was a second theory which said the world was created six thousand years ago, in six days, and in this very place." We spoke when we landed, and he told me that he frankly did not know if Darwin was a scientist or a crook. That he frankly did not know if the birth of the universe was an immemorial event or a historic event like in the Bible. And I felt that is the thing of which, if I was American, I would be afraid. Today, they say, there is a Darwinist science and there is a creationist science. What the young pilot of my helicopter meant, by saying there are two theories, was exactly that. This is very serious, because if both of them are scientific then you give to creationism the title of legitimacy. This is a phenomenon which we don't have in France. It might be a little example, but it tells a lot of the dark side of the future of America.
Tocqueville said that there was an instinctive mistrust of the American people toward great ideas. He called them "les grandes systèmes"—grand, great systems. And this nourished the idea of a pragmatic, un-ideological nation. I found exactly the contrary.
There was a book published one year ago, by a good author—and a very good book which I recommend to you—called What's the Matter With Kansas? The author of this book wondered whether it was a surprise that so many Americans were ready to vote against their economic interests. To vote against one's economic interests means ideology—means politics. It is the very definition of politics. If people voted only for their economic interests there would not be politics.
It is no longer true that America is a neutral, pragmatic, unpolitical country. One of the most stupid things I heard during the two last years about America is that the conservative coalition and President Bush went to Iraq because of interests—because of oil. No! For the best or for the worst, America went to Iraq for ideological purposes, for ideas.
